Washington Football Players’ Suspension is An Early Test for Chris Peterson

New Washington Husky football head coach Chris Peterson is facing his first taste of adversity in Seattle. The projected starting quarterback Cyler Miles and freshmen wide receiver Damore’ea Stringfellow have been suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules; the school announced on Thursday.

The violation of team rules that caused the suspension is rumored to be participating in a couple of assaults during the celebrations after the Seahawks victory during the Super Bowl. According to the victim, Stringfellow and Miles came up to him and his girl friend asking if they were Broncos fans. Apparently, the victim tried to walk away but the two accused players punched hit him multiple times in the face.

Chris Peterson has already stepped in and suspended the two players, but the question now becomes…what is going to happen with these two players down the road?

This is a program that is still trying to put the “Victory and Ruins” era of Rick Neuheisel behind it; and having two players — potentially two key players — go out and committee assault is going to have an impact on the program’s future developments. If Coach Peterson goes with the route of permanently banishing the players from the team, then the squad will more than likely suffer as you have redshirt freshmen Jeff Lindquist as the next guy in line for the starting QB position.

Having Lindquist start, while it could be detrimental to the program’s short-term health, could be a major boon for the long-term health of the program. Not only would it help send a message that Peterson has a zero-tolerance level for assault, it could also help Lindquist develop into a stud QB.

But if he doesn’t permanently banish them from the program, and goes suspending them from practice — or a certain number of games — then there will become this very vocal group of people who will say that the punishment is too light; that there should be more protection for the victim, and less protection for the star athletes.

And those people do have a really, really good point. ‘

That being said there are a lot of other factors at stake here, and those factors make me really glad I’m not Chris Petereson right now.

4 replies

Tough way to start the new era, isn’t it? Always interesting how new coaches walking into this nonsense sort things out. Whatever the outcome, I think it’s like a band-aid. Pull it off fast and it hurts less. No rush to an unfair judgement but the sooner any decision is made the better for all concerned. Sound like criticism will certainly come regardless of the outcome.

To me this is an issue of why suspend these guys indefinitely, unless he has some rule he has to. I think he should just translate the suspension to games in the season and be done. I don’t know. Maybe there is good reason to get kids away, but to me, if they’re getting in trouble, they should still have to do the grunt work of their job.

It is going to be very interesting to see how this situation turns out for the Huskies. The way the case is going to turn out, especially if Peterson releases these guys even if the charges get dropped.